PrologueIt wasn’t the explosion that alarmed him. It was the silence.
In the aftermath, as the dust--and metal, and body parts--settled, he heard nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a muffled, muted facsimile of the screams and sirens and shouts that surrounded him, surrounded them all.
Silence.
The explosion had ruptured his eardrums and so shocked his auditory nerves that he wouldn’t hear for days, and never again as well as he had before. As he looked around, trying to sort out what had happened, trying to move, he saw a silent film of devastation. Grizz, who had been at the big gun, took the worst of it. There was little left to be sent home; the biggest parts were still gripping the handles of the gun. A pink mist descended; he looked up to see where it came from, and knew that it wa
